


The Thunder Comes After

by what_alchemy



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Brainwashing, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Torture, ignores the rest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-16 11:18:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19648117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/what_alchemy/pseuds/what_alchemy
Summary: Bucky's job, from the very beginning, has been to make sure Steve is safe.





	The Thunder Comes After

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kerfect](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kerfect/gifts).



> For kerfect, who asked for hurt/comfort. This is something I've been wanting to write for a long time, so thanks very much for the opportunity, and I hope you like it.

I.

Bucky was intimate with the particular twist of Steve’s spine. 

He could trail his palm down the ladder of knobs that pushed tender against Steve’s buttermilk skin and pinpoint the exact spot where it seemed as if the very hand of God had wrenched his bones just to watch him suffer. It was low, right above the dimples Steve had over the swell of his ass, those sweet hollows that begged for Bucky’s lips. Bucky liked to run his hand down the curve of Steve’s spine in long, firm strokes until he rested it just so on that little knot that skewed his whole body, that curved his back like the swirl of a pig’s tail, that would give him a hump between his shoulders before he was twenty-five. Bucky would rest his hand there and press down, rubbing away the day’s aches and eliciting a low, contented sigh from the base of Steve’s throat. Steve would snuffle further into Bucky’s chest, and Bucky would bury his nose in the cornsilk of Steve’s hair, their legs tangling together in the sheets. Sweat and spunk cooling between them. Damp, spent cocks sticking to skin, making them laugh when they had to part. 

Bucky liked to imagine that they never had to. Part, that is. Bucky liked to imagine that he and Steve could stay forever in the lumpy, narrow cot they called a bed while twilight seeped into their bedroom and the sounds out on the street were muted and distant, drowned out by breath and heartbeats and softly whispered words until the two of them, drowsy on love, slipped into sleep.

Steve’s spine, and how Bucky’s hand fit into its imperfections. Wiry arms stronger than they looked slung carelessly across his waist. Soft lips and humid breath as Steve dozed on Bucky’s chest. The smell of him. That’s what Bucky thinks about locked away in a lab, marched out to a table and strapped in while they poke and prod and he screams his throat raw until it’s time to put him in the pen again. The lab coats with his blood quite literally on their hands natter away in German. His name, his rank, his number are all that pass his lips, but in his mind there is only one word: Steve. 

II.

This week’s mark is a boy. Chrysanthos Balodis, student at the wealthiest private school in Riga, aged fifteen years. The Asset’s handlers do not give him reasons and he does not need them; he trusts his country to strike with precision against her enemies: she the coiled muscle, he the tightened fist. He needs no reason but that he is called upon, and he is glad to serve. 

The photo he is given has caught the boy walking with friends. He is looking off to the side, beyond the borders of the photograph, head tilted, mouth smiling. He is narrow of shoulder and reedy, skeleton stretched to the height of a man without his body catching up. He has light hair that lists over his forehead, a constellation of acne, and an oversized nose that will be less out of place when he is an adult. 

It is the Asset’s job to make sure he never grows into that nose.

The handlers squabble over the best way to eliminate the target. The red-haired one with the hatchet face wants it done as school lets out, amid a throng of students.

“Maximum terror,” she says. “A message the governor cannot ignore.”

“Your desire for recognition will get us all killed,” says the dark-haired one with the permanent sneer. “We do this cleanly: a bullet to the brain in the middle of the night, lay the body at the foot of his father’s bed.”

They argue each plan’s finer points back and forth while the Asset lays out his weapons on the table. He takes each gun apart and cleans each individual piece before reassembling them. He removes his knives and polishes them until he can see himself reflected in the steel blades: his is a plain face, Caucasian with shorn brown hair, blue eyes. He looks like every other man in the Soviet Union. This is what makes him great, his superiors tell him. He has the ability to go unnoticed. He does the job and he does it well. He is the strike of lightning—the thunder comes after, meaningless.

He slips all his knives into place and straps his guns away. He knows what to do even if the handlers do not. He rises in silence and leaves them bickering over nothing. The Asset trades in blood and efficiency, not ego and pride. 

He becomes a ghost. He steals onto the Balodis family compound; their security is meager at best. He is a shadow on the walls of each hallway, and then he is in a bedroom he has determined is the target’s. Decor in browns and navies, a battered black and white football, little laundry messes not yet cleaned up by a mother or, more likely, a maid. 

He lies in wait in the closet. He can be as still as a painting. He can shut away the rumblings of his stomach and the ache of his bladder. Through the slats he sees a maid bustle in and tidy up, a younger sister clamber onto the bed to jump up and down before being called away, an older sister sneak cigarettes from the desk drawer.

Finally the target— _just a boy_ —comes in and slings his school bag onto the floor. The Asset watches him extract muddy cleats from his bag and kick them toward the closet, leaving chunks of dirt like a trail across the carpet. He tears off his uniform shirt and sends it sailing through the air to land near the cleats, leaving him in a thin cotton undershirt. After that, books and bits of paper are thrown haphazardly across the desk, and the target sinks into the chair before it.

He hunches over the desk to scribble on a piece of paper. He must be nearsighted; he bends so closely to the paper that his hair must brush its surface, and the Asset’s heartbeat, which usually keeps unassailable time, ticks up. His breath comes quicker still when he catches sight of the knobs of the target’s spine pressing a ladder into the undershirt. 

The Asset has a clean shot through the slats. He could even step out unheard and snap his neck before he realizes there is an intruder. If he wants blood, he could slit the boy’s throat ear to ear. He could lay him, this target, on the bed until the mattress soaked up all his blood. The maid would find him, or perhaps a sister. There would be screaming. The Asset would be gone like so much mist, his job finished. 

He lets the minutes tick past. His heart never calms. Someone calls from beyond the target’s bedroom and he looks up, allowing the Asset to catch sight of his profile. Despite the baby fullness of his face, the boy has a sharp jawline, and the angle of it sends a swoop of trepidation through the Asset’s stomach.

The target turns back to his work— _Is he drawing? What is he drawing? A figure, maybe, David in repose, his mother, or comics for the papers, which pay him a dollar whenever they take one._ —and the Asset opens the closet doors soundlessly, knife in hand. He creeps up behind the boy and holds his hands out on either side of the target’s head. 

_His face blurs. There is an alley. There is a big man and a small one and they run together like watercolors. One is kicking the other. One is inside the other, both of them writhing in ecstasy. One is emerging from the skin of the other like a hatched egg._

_There has only ever been one imperative._

The Asset can feel the heat from the Target’s body. He can see now what the target is scribbling. Love notes to some schoolmate—a girl. 

What was it that he’s meant to do? There is something he’s forgetting. 

_Cradling the only face he ever wanted to look at, pink lips parted and blue eyes lidded, skin shining with the dew of exertion, the Asset breathes his name—_

“You. Boy. ”

The target jumped but the Asset silenced him, flesh hand mashed against his mouth, metal holding the back of his head. Blue eyes widen— _the wrong color, the wrong shape, like a funhouse mirror on Coney Island_ — and nostrils flare above the Asset’s hand. He can feel the way the target sucks in air to start screaming.

“If you make a sound, you will not live,” the Asset says.

The target is losing color rapidly as tears stream from those eyes— _like the sky instead of like the sea_ —but a rush of breath leaves him and he does not scream.

“I’ve been sent to protect you,” the Asset says. “Come with me.”

III.

That was the first time the Asset ran. The first time he would slaughter any handlers sent to retrieve him, the first time he would leave a target somewhere isolated with instructions on how to evade capture, the first time he would be shocked and his mind wiped clean and his body put away in a freezer. 

It would not be the last.

IV.

The Asset was lashed to a chair, tipped forward at 45°. Metal bands held him in place: one over his forehead, two over his torso, one over his hips, two for his right arm, and three for each leg. His left arm was gone. _Red and torn in the snow, his left arm was gone. The nuns wouldn’t beat him and call him sinister anymore._ He laughed.

“Look at it,” a male doctor said. “It’s _laughing_.”

“I told you, the base programming is wrong,” a female doctor said. 

“It is not wrong,” came another voice, not Russian now but accented with German. Who was that? Who was it? _He knows that voice, he knows that face, his arm **burns** but there’s nothing there and this tiny man is **smiling** —_ “It is simply stubborn.”

“Admit you did it wrong the first time, Zola,” said the female voice.

“If there were anything to admit, I would do so, but I assure you, my work is impeccable.”

“It needs to be put down. It doesn’t work properly. How many years has it been? How many disastrous operations?”

“It is the only model we have,” said the German. _Swiss?_ “Without him, there is no serum, there is no program. Without him, we have nothing, do you understand?”

“We barely have anything as it is!”

“Take its blood and reverse engineer it,” another Russians said. “Then this experiment is over.”

“We will salvage this,” said the German. “It will be our masterpiece.”

The German’s face is round and grinning as he pulls up a chair before the Asset, but it is far from pleasant. The angle at which they have suspended the Asset has his blood pooling in his face. The pressure behind his eyes is so great he imagines they may pop out like bottle rockets. _Ten for a nickel at the newsstand, setting them off at dusk, Mrs. Santorelli leaning out her window with her fists in the air, threatening to tan their hides_.

“Ah yes, you are remembering,” the German said, sounding pleased. He turned his head to address his colleagues. “The rapid eye movement, the glance to its left. Make note.” He faced the Asset again, lemon slice smile splitting his moon face. “Tell me, what is it you remember?”

The angle wore on him. He didn’t trade in words anyway. The German asked him again, and again, and again.

“Blood and efficiency,” he said at last.

The German sat back, lacing his hands together on the crest of his belly. His smile faded but did not disappear. Behind him, men and women in lab coats were poised to write on notepads and clipboards.

“Let’s try something else,” the German said in a different language. The Asset tried to shake it from his head but he was pinned in place like an insect. Stars cascaded before his eyes. _English. Like water to a parched tongue, like a breeze in the desert, like the sweep of dark lashes fluttering open: English._ “Tell me about Captain America.”

“American supersoldier, born 1918, Brooklyn, New York, enlisted 1943—”

“No, stop. Stop.”

The Asset stopped. His breath was labored, his eyes ached, his muscles burned. The German nodded at someone behind the Asset and suddenly his chair was tipped upright and he dragged in a hard-won breath. The German pulled his chair up as close as he could get, until he could feel the heat of his body, until the plump, pink little hand rose up and pushed the hair from the Asset’s forehead, as gentle as a lover. The Asset’s empty stomach roiled. 

“English please,” the German said, so softly. “And tell me what you know. Not what everyone else knows. Just you.”

The Asset’s tongue was swollen and he could not swallow. His throat was dry and his head pounded. 

“American supersoldier, born 19—”

The German nodded and electricity coursed through the Asset’s body, whiting out his vision, frying his blood. His flesh was fire. Fingers pried open his eyelids and water splashed on his face.

“Tell me about Captain America.”

“American supersoldier—”

Electricity, blue and white. 

Blood, red.

V.

There is a wall of muscle where Steve’s eyes should be. 

“I thought you were smaller,” Bucky says. 

There is a sea of fire, and Steve jumps over it like it’s nothing, like his lungs work, like his spine is straight and walking doesn’t hurt his hips and his heart is hale and—

This is how Bucky knows he’s dead.

It feels real. It’s a good facsimile, like something out of _Astounding Stories._ He’s trudging through Italy and Steve is leading the way, a head taller and a foot wider than he should be. There’s blood and pain but not enough for everything that happened, not really. Everyone cheers for Captain America. Nobody talks about the guys who went back to the labs and didn’t come out again. No one talks about how Bucky was somehow the only one recovered from those experiments. 

Just because you can feel the dirt and smell the shit doesn’t mean it’s real.

VI. 

Asthma, Steve’s ma called it. Bucky found an encyclopedia and looked it up once; the entry was just a whole buncha 25¢ words that meant “can’t breathe right.” 

The library was full of good stuff so he found something else that said the treatment was asthma cigarettes, and heck, Bucky’s dad had carton of those squirrelled away at his bedside table any day of the week. He brought them over and presented them to Steve’s ma with a big smile on his face, and he musta looked dumb as a box of rocks with three of his front teeth missing at the same time, but Mrs. Rogers patted his cheek and thanked him.

“We don’t use those to treat asthma anymore, James, but thanks all the same,” she said. “You’re a sweet boy.”

Bucky was so disappointed he almost cried; he was so sure he’d finally cracked it. He was gonna cure Steve! He had to, had to, had to.

Mrs. Rogers taught him what to do, and told him being calm and talking Steve through an attack was the best thing for it, so that’s what Bucky did. He got real good at it, too, especially because Mrs. Rogers worked odd hours on account of being a nurse.

So he knew what to do when he found Steve on the stairs one day, sobbing and choking into his knees. He plonked himself right down and set a hand on Steve’s back.

“Hey, hey,” he said softly. “You’re gonna be all right, we’re gonna be all right.”

Steve couldn’t even chase enough breath to say Bucky’s name, but Bucky could see him trying to form the word. 

“Listen, remember what we practiced?” Bucky said, rubbing circles into the space between Steve’s shoulder blades. “Mouth shut, breathe in through your nose, then purse your lips and breathe out through your mouth. Come on, try.” Steve tried, Bucky knew he did, but he only choked and the tears came faster. “Come on, Stevie, you can do this.” Bucky reached over with his free hand and pinched the corners of Steve’s mouth together to form a tiny O of his lips. “In through the nose, that’s it.” 

One tremulous breath, too shallow, came in through his nose and filled his body up. 

“Good,” Bucky said, “that’s good, Stevie. Out now, through your mouth.” Bucky’s hand stayed on Steve’s face, half cradling, half forcing his mouth to keep that shape. Steve let the breath out, shaky, and Bucky said, “Again.”

Another breath came, deeper this time, and then another, and another, until Bucky let the hand on Steve’s face drop. His other arm stayed where it was, a welcome weight across Steve’s back. Steve turned his face away from Bucky, hid it in his knees, and tried not to make a sound as he cried. Bucky held on to him, rubbed his back, whispered that everything was gonna be fine, they were gonna play marbles, they were gonna eat their weight in licorice, they were gonna catch the next picture at the cinema, everything was fine, everything was fine, everything was fine. 

VII.

“It’s seizing. My God, stop the current!”

“Do it again.”

“Do you _want_ a vegetable on your hands, Dr. Zola?”

“It is strong, and the serum will protect it. What we need is its complete compliance, do you understand?”

“Its brain is about to dribble out its ears.”

“Trust me.”

“I trust you like I trust a fox in my garden, Zola.”

“So be it. Shock it again.” 

“What about when it can no longer aim a gun? What about when it shorts like a fuse in the middle of an operation?”

“It’s my project, Herr Doktor. Kindly leave me to it.”

“You’re going to destroy the entire program. Zola. Are you listening to me? Zola!”

“Soldier. Look at me. Look at me. Good. Tell me about Captain America.”

VIII.

Bucky no longer believes in Heaven, and he’s shaky on God, but he knows Hell is real, and it is layered. What’s that book? Poem. Andre, or Dominic, or Vincenzo, something Italian, anyway. Lots of Italians in Brooklyn, not like Italians here, real Italians here in Italy, in Hell, and maybe there’s a Hell for every kind of person Bucky ever met in New York and anyway.

Anyway.

Bucky’s first taste of Hell was when his Lieutenant told him to aim at a kid and he did it, saw the whites of his eyes in his crosshairs, couldn’t have been any older than Bucky’s kid brother, whiling his days away finishing high school while Bucky was in Hell blowing the heads off of kids he should be razzing, trading cards with, giving advice to. The kid was a Nazi, and Bucky was told he shouldn’t care. Maybe it made him a bad soldier and a shit patriot to care anyway. Maybe it was even worse that he pulled the trigger the moment the Lieutenant commanded it.

Bucky’s second taste of hell was on a table, veins pumped full of shit, ears full of German, mouth full of _James Barnes, Sergeant, 32557038, James Barnes, Sergeant, 32557038, James Barnes, Sergeant, 32557038._

Bucky’s third taste of Hell is this right now, his body sinking into Steve’s perfect ass as Steve stifles a moan and turns pink all around him, tossing his head on the pillow. Bucky shoves his fingers in Steve’s mouth to keep him quiet, and those eyes snap open and it’s just like being home, just like dancing to Billie on the radio and watching Steve’s lids slide shut half-way as his cock firms up against Bucky’s thigh. It’s just like bearing him down into their two little mattresses shoved together on the floor, just like licking him open and pushing his way inside as if they can become one throbbing, ecstatic thing brimming lust and come and passing the word back and forth between their mouths like the best possible secret. It’s just like what he really wants.

He doesn’t even know what he sees in these regulation sheets. Where is the concave stomach, the ribs in sharp relief? Where are the narrow, rounded shoulders, the legs like little twigs, the rasp in the lungs that will someday become a rattle, a hiss, a silence? 

The hair is just the same. The eyes. The lips. The begging. The clench around his cock. The grip on the back of his neck. The tongue sweeping inside his mouth.

Hell tricks you. Bucky doesn’t know much, but he knows that.

IX.

The Asset wakes to routine.

He is brought to temperature in a warming chamber and then fed tasteless gruel while naked. The assistants who push his body around to their satisfaction watch him as he voids his waste, and then they spray him down with water that is too cold and too pressurized, like a pig before slaughter. He does not react. There is nothing to react to. 

They dress him and fit a metal arm on him. They slot a mask over the lower half of his face. They push him out into a bright room and secure him to a medical chair with leather straps and metal. Doctors and lab technicians flank him, and soldiers stand behind them, guns at their sides. Before the Asset are men in suits—foreign by the colors, the lapels, the shoes—and their own heavily armed tactical team.

A white man, past middle age with reddish blond hair and a crisp grey suit steps up to him and peers into his eyes from all sides. His lips are parted and he is smiling like a man who has bargained his way to a great treasure.

“I want to see him,” he says in English. He straightens and sweeps a careless hand toward the Asset. “Take off that mask.”

No one moves, and the man dips his head down, chin tucked toward his chest, mouth curving into a deeper smile. He flicks his gaze up through russet lashes at the labcoat to the Asset’s right. He’s handsome, the Asset realizes in a distant, clinical way. He’s handsome and he knows it.

“The Soviet Union has fallen, comrade,” the man says. “He belongs to me now, fair and square.” He lifts his head and squares his shoulders. The smile would be warm on another man. “Now. Take off his mask.”

The doctor closest to the Asset approaches him. He does not lift his eyes to meet the Asset’s. He sets a hand on the Asset’s head to steady him, though there is no need. The Asset simply awaits instruction. 

The mask is removed and the man in the suit bends at the waist to inspect the Asset’s face. The Asset is still and placid. The man in the suit studies him for a long time, his smile never wavering.

Finally he steps back.

“Extraordinary,” he says. “And he has no idea who he is?”

“ _He_ isn’t anyone, Mr. Pierce,” the doctor says. The bitterness is tangible.

“Well we both know that’s not true.”

Pierce reaches out a hand and flicks a lock of hair away from the Asset’s face.

“It is a pretty bit of programming,” the doctor says. “No different than one of your supercomputers.”

“He can be better than anything you lot ever imagined,” Pierce says. He turns toward his own people. “Pack everything up. Triple-check before we leave—I don’t want to have to come back to this frozen hell.”

“You make a mistake if you think of it as a person,” the doctor says, snide.

Pierce pauses as if considering.

“Maybe your mistake was forgetting that that’s his strength,” he says.

The Asset is put back in cryo-storage, but not before Pierce leans in close, blue eyes hot with barely contained excitement, and whispers into his ear.

“We’re going to save the world, you and I.”

X.

He runs, he kills, he teaches Pierce the lessons the Russian doctors couldn’t. 

Pierce returns the favor.

XI.

Steven Grant Rogers, codename Captain America, American supersoldier born 1918, Brooklyn, New York. Missing in action 1945, discovered alive in 2011. Employment: SHIELD. 

Threat to national security. Threat to Project Insight. Threat to Hydra.

Pierce hands the Asset a photograph.

“This is your mark,” he says. The Asset glances at it briefly. White, 30s, previously broken nose, uniform like an American flag. “He’ll put up a fight,” Pierce continues. “I expect you to give him no quarter, are we clear?”

The Asset nods once.

“Grenades, destruction of public property, loss of civilian life—anything to take him in, do you understand?”

The Asset nods once.

Pierce eyes the Asset and pours himself a glass of wine. He swirls the wine around in his glass and breathes it in, gaze never wavering.

“We need you,” he says. “Your work is indispensible.”

The Asset remains still. Until there is a question, there can be no answer. 

Pierce breathes out and sits back. He drums his fingers on the tabletop. His eyes glint.

“You won’t let me down,” he says, as if to himself. “You are the strong right arm of this brave new world.”

It is the left, the Asset thinks, that is the strong one. 

XII.

“You’re my mission!” 

“Then finish it.”

XIII.

A shield, falling.

XIV.

Barnes catches sight of Rogers only from between the crosshairs. It’s comfortable, he thinks, to watch him from a distance, to pick off those who would harm Captain America like flies before they ever realize they’re being watched. It’s easier to make sure he’s safe without having to look him in the eye.

Rogers in action is thrilling—a ballet with blood. Barnes is fairly certain he’s never been to a ballet, but this must be better: quick, sure feet following the arc of a kick, fists a symphony of precision, that shield soaring like a bird of prey. And Barnes, making headshots in a halo all around him. Their own personal choreography.

Rogers used to look straight at him, as if he knew exactly where he was, and scowl. Something Barnes couldn’t control made his mouth curl up to see Rogers make that face. That stubborn _I double dog dare you_ tilt of his chin. Those _don’t you pity me_ eyes. That little guy superimposed on the big one. 

These days, Rogers doesn’t bother. He raises his head from the carnage of any given firefight, Stark or Wilson circling above, and he flicks off a non-regulation salute. Barnes’s ribcage eases its lock around his lungs, even as his Swiss cheese memory searches endlessly for context.

XV.

It was always going to come to this.

A building collapsing. Wilson down. Romanov aiding while Rhodes stands guard. Stark blasting the enemy back.

Rogers, dashing inside the ruin for, who knows? A child, a puppy, a goldfish. It didn’t matter. Steve Rogers had never heard of leaving well enough alone. 

Barnes abandons his gear and anything that might weigh him down. He’s so fast he’s practically flying. There is no thought, there is only the blood pounding through his body, the muscles propelling him toward Steve. 

There is fire and dust and falling brick and steel. Barnes slides under a beam just before it crushes the concrete floor beneath his feet. He flies through the debris shouting Steve’s name. There is dust in his eyes and the heat is blistering his skin. He’s coughing. He’s heaving for air and his legs are still pushing him, still pumping, he’ll never be tired, he’ll never give up, he’s never heard of leaving well enough alone either, isn’t that what the teachers and their parents and their neighbors always said? _Those two are as bad as each other._ Isn’t that what they used to say, isn’t that what they, isn’t that

Bucky finds Steve holding up a beam with his shield, his body curled underneath it, but he’s shaking, he’s bleeding, sweat’s pouring off him and he’s not gonna make it, he’s not strong enough, this isn’t something he can will into going his way. This is the whole building dropping down on him and Bucky Barnes is a solider, an Asset, a killer, but most of all, most of all he’s been in love with Steve Rogers since before he knew his heart was connected to his dick, his happiness to Steve’s smile.

There has only ever been one imperative.

Bucky runs full speed toward Steve and drops to a slide, legs out, and kicks Steve out from under the beam only to take his place there. Steve screams but the beam falls. Through the dust and the fire, Bucky makes sure he sees that face one last time.

XVI.

Bucky wakes to low light and the steady beat of the heart monitor. A glance to his side reveals his arm is gone again. He drops his head back into the pillow, eyes shut. When he opens them again, Wilson his looming before him, face filling his line of vision. Wilson is bruised and swollen and his arm is in a sling, but none of this hampers the hairy eyeball he’s subjecting Bucky to.

“You awake?” Wilson says.

Bucky grunts.

“Yeah I figured,” Wilson says. He pulls up a chair with his free arm and sets himself into it gingerly. 

“What,” Bucky says.

“Me?”

“Mm.”

“Falling debris,” Wilson says. “Figured you’d know, being our little shadow and all.”

“I keep my eye.” Bucky wheezes and heaves in air. “On Steve.”

Wilson rolled his eyes. 

“Yeah, yeah,” he says. “Y’all are gross, you know that?”

“Steve isn’t. Gross.”

Wilson snorts.

“He’s totally gross,” he says. “He was gross before when he was just making you those little sandwiches he leaves out, now he’s gross pacing outside your door. I almost had to brain him to get him to take a damn nap.”

“He here now?”

“His ass is asleep and we’re gonna leave it that way, okay?”

“Mm.”

“Good.” Wilson sighs and shakes his head. “Gross.”

“You.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Wilson says. “I’m sick of the wallpaper in my room anyway. Go to sleep.”

“You make sure.”

“Yeah,” Wilson says. “Yeah, I’ll make sure he’s safe.”

XVII.

Steve fusses over the stump. Bucky's shoulder and collarbone and everything left of his humerus was crushed along with the metal arm, and it remains a swollen, blistered nub that throbs despite his super healing. The doctors and Stark can’t fit him a new arm until it’s completely healed, but it’s slow going. If he were a normal man, the stump would have had to be amputated, too. If he were a normal man, he wouldn’t be alive and running into burning buildings in 2019. 

Bucky puts up a meager fight every few hours when Steve undresses it and slathers it with ointment. Steve has a line or two in his forehead these days, and his mouth goes flat when he cleans the stump. He looks, more and more, like his mother, whom Bucky remembers as if plucked from a gauzy dream. _Keep it clean, James. Lord, what am I going to do with you two?_

Steve doesn’t meet his eyes.

XVIII.

The stump is still not all the way healed, but Stark scans it for a preliminary fitting anyway.

“All the bells and whistles, comrade,” he says. “Lightweight, sensors, maybe even actual feeling. Better than the real thing; I’m jealous actually. Look at me, I’m as green as Bruce with the wrong coffee order.”

Bucky nods along but Stark’s mad hatter enthusiasm is as exhausting as his father’s, and when Bucky thinks of slipping into a new arm, a new gun, a new set of riot gear, he wants to sink deeper into his hospital bed and wait for Steve to fish him out.

XIX.

Steve is with him when the doctors give him the all clear to check out of the hospital. He grinds his teeth together before asking, “Where do you want to go?”

Bucky’s hair is long. He pushes his fingers through it and drags his nails across his scalp. 

“What are my options?” he says.

Steve squares his shoulders and looks past his ear.

“You could go anywhere, Buck,” he says. “You could live in a yurt in Mongolia or a penthouse in Manhattan. Anywhere you can think of. Welcome to the 21st century, and all your back pay.”

His too, he doesn’t say, but Bucky hears it loud and clear. They were both listed as MIA, way back when, and came back to life never having to worry about food in their bellies or a roof over their heads again. Steve lives in a brownstone in Brooklyn when he’s not out there fighting the forces of evil and saving kittens from trees. Bucky used to watch him there from the rooftops. Steve used to stand at the window and look right into his sights.

Bucky rubs his stump. Steve’s getting that look on his face, like if Bucky’s in pain, he’ll burn the world down.

“I think,” he says.

Steve waits. The tip of his tongue darts out to wet his lips. 

“I think I don’t want a new arm,” Bucky says, and clamps his jaw shut. The lines on Steve’s forehead deepen. 

“Oh.”

“I think. I don’t want to be in the fight anymore.”

Steve’s breath leaves him in a slow stream, and he smiles, nodding.

“That sounds good, Buck.”

Bucky’s heart picks up speed. He holds out his hand, palm up. He sees Steve’s Adam’s apple bob once before he sets his hand in Bucky’s. Bucky tangles their fingers together.

“I think you don’t want to be in the fight anymore, either,” he says.

Steve’s head snaps up. 

“Bucky.”

“Hear me out,” Bucky says, and squeezes Steve’s hand. “The Avengers have a lot of new blood. I’ve been in here for weeks and you’ve never left. Wilson’s already out there, throwing around a very familiar shield.”

“It’s useful.”

“You gave it to him,” Bucky says. “You taught him how to control it.”

Steve tucks his chin into his chest. Bucky releases his hand and hesitates for only a moment before brushing his fingers through Steve’s hair. The blond has given way to brown now. Strands of silver glint under the fluorescent hospital lights. The two of them, a hundred years after they were born, are finally getting old.

“I needed to be here.”

“You needed to rest,” Bucky says. 

“I needed _you_ ,” Steve says. The eyes trained on his are intense, but Bucky cannot look away.

“Why did you go into that building, Steve?”

Steve drops his gaze, but turns into Bucky’s touch. Bucky’s palm slides down to cup his cheek. Steve’s sigh comes out shaking.

“I thought you were in there,” he says. “I thought I saw—I don’t know what I saw, but I couldn’t—” He shakes his head and his words dry up.

Bucky traces Steve’s full lower lip with his thumb. The beat of his heart sends hot blood southward, but he pays it no mind.

“There are so many ways to fight,” Bucky says. On his television all these weeks, he’s seen a country he once fought for in tatters. He’s seen a country he once died for betray its own people. He’s seen those same people stand up and demand a better future. He’s realized it was not a country he’d once loved, but the people in it. It was not a country that was worth laying down your life for, or taking up arms for, or heading to the voting booth, the protest, the town hall for—it was its people. 

Steve looks pale, but he meets Bucky’s eyes and nods. That jaw tilts up. _There he is,_ Bucky thinks. _God Bless America._

__“Yeah, Buck,” he says. “There are.”_ _

__They kiss for the first time in almost seventy-five years. It’s soft and electric and thrilling, just like the first time, the tenth time, the millionth time._ _

__Bucky lays his forehead on Steve’s and closes his eyes. He breathes his breath._ _

__“Take me home,” he says._ _

__

__XX._ _

__Steve’s spine is a graceful groove now, set like calligraphy between the strong muscles of his back and terminating between the pale crests of his ass cheeks. The fine dusting of hair there is golden and inviting. Bucky, who has found the lack of an arm very convenient for curling up chest to back with Steve in the night, strokes down Steve’s spine and over his ass and earns a sigh of pleasure, a tilt of the hips to press into the heat of his palm. If he dips into the crevice, he will find Steve’s hole, still slack and leaking Bucky’s own semen. He could slip inside and make them one flesh, one body, one soul again; that’s what Steve is asking for. But that can wait. It is enough to sit in admiration and gratitude for all they have. All they’ve been given, and all they’ve built._ _

__His wedding ring glints in the low light._ _

__

__**End** _ _

**Author's Note:**

> I know there are many great causes and urgent situations out there right now, and so many of us barely have enough to get by ourselves, but I hope if you are able, you will donate even a small amount to [RAICES](https://www.raicestexas.org/donate/) or the [ACLU.](https://www.aclu.org/) I cannot offer anything in return like so many other fic authors, but maybe together we can make a difference.


End file.
